This Alphabet Matching Activity is a great way to repurpose the plastic easter eggs lying around in your house. It develops letter recognition, name recognition, color recognition and fine motor skills.

Write the uppercase alphabets on the top part of the egg and corresponding lowercase alphabets on the bottom part using permanent marker.

You can do this for all the 26 letters, although I chose to do just the ones which form their name.

Write your LOs name on a paper for them. For older kids who know how to spell their name, you might not need this.

Take all the eggs, separate the top from the bottom and mix them up.

Let your kids match the uppercase alphabets to lowercase alphabets to make the eggs whole again and arrange them to form their name.

This activity was a part of our Easter Sensory Bin. This was Miss A’s(3yrs) first ever lowercase learning activity. So we tried to keep it simple. I wrote the uppercase & lowercase alphabets on the top half egg to make it easy for her to match. That means, one side of the top part had uppercase and other side had lowercase indicating they are the same letter and the bottom half egg had the just the lowercase alphabet.

She was able to match the top half (uppercase) of the egg to form her name calling out each letter. Then she turned the eggs to see the corresponding lowercase. She matched the egg halves by lowercase to make a whole egg and then twisted the egg to match uppercase to lowercase. This was a great way for her to learn some lowercase alphabets. Once she masters the ones in her name, we will add more to this. After getting familiar with the letters, she matched them to form her name.

Miss D(2yrs) matched top half(uppercase alphabets) of the eggs to her name with no help. Then i turned each egg the other side to show her the matching lowercase. But its too early for her now. So we chose to stick with forming name using uppercase and matching eggs by color. She named the colors of the eggs used.

Sensory bins are always a hit with my kids. I love them because they are great for developing fine motor skills, imagination and creativity. Even the simplest fillers keeps my kids engaged for hours. This Easter Sensory Bin is easy to set up and fun to play with.

Here’s what I did – Pour green colored rice (how to color rice) into a storage bin, add plastic easter eggs(different sizes) and plastic rainbow colored bunnies (i also added a bunny figurine) to it. Add measuring spoons and styrofoam egg carton (the ones in which we get chocolate marshmallow eggs) and the sensory bin is all set to play with.

Miss A(3 yrs) & Miss D(2yrs) enjoyed playing with this bin. I set this up during their nap time. They went straight to it after they woke up and was playing with it until dinner – took a short break for evening snack.

Here’s how they played with it

D was so excited to see the bunny figurine in the bin. The first thing she did was to pick it up and sing the hop little bunny song and made the bunnies hop on the rice.

A & D scooped the rice using spoons and hands and transferred it to the eggs, closed the eggs and shaked it to hear the rattle sound. Then poured the rice back to the bin or hands. They liked to touch and feel the rice.

D filled the egg carton with rice, tried to poke it to make holes, closed the carton and shaked it to hear the noise it made. She then dumped it to the bin.

A filled the eggs with rice, and closed it to store in the egg carton.

Then we took out the big eggs, D put the matching bunnies inside the egg and closed it. A added some rice to the egg and made the bunnies stand on it (thats what she said) and then closed the eggs. They both shaked their eggs and compared the sounds. We discussed the different colors and sounds they observed.

The plastic eggs had uppercase and lowercase alphabets written on it. Once they were done playing with the rice, they tried to match the alphabets and we did a name recognition activity later. More about that on a different post.

With just one week for spring, here are few caterpillar themed learning activities which we’ve been doing. Try it with your LOs.

Name Caterpillar – name recognition

Cut out circles from construction paper and write your kids name on it. Use a white circle to make smiley face. Let your LOs glue them on to form their name to make a name caterpillar. For kids who dont know their name order yet, write it down on a piece if paper to help them pick the correct alphabet order. We laminated our work, and extended the activity – Write the name on round labels and let your kids match it to the caterpillar. Miss A(3yrs) and Miss D(2yrs) loved this activity. I left it on their shelf and every now and then they would ask me for more labels to match up.

Number Caterpillar – number recognition, number order

I printed out this template, wrote numbers on round labels and gave it to my LOs. They matched the numbers and put the labels on it. Miss A(3yrs) & Miss D(2yrs) did this activity when mommy was getting the lunch ready 😀

Counting Caterpillar –number recognition, counting, one to one correspondence

Print the above template, let your LOs use any math manipulatives and count with it. We used cubes. You could also do this with Pompoms, playdough, dot markers, stickers, finger paint, or color with crayons. This activity was a great exercise for Miss A(3yrs) to practice counting and develop number recognition. Whereas for Miss D(2yrs) it was about one to one correspondence – she was trying to place one block per circle.

Shapes Caterpillar –shapes & color recognition

Cut out shapes from felt. On a cardstock, trace the shapes to make a shapes caterpillar. Stick the velcro dot stickers on the cardstock and on the felt pieces. Let your LOs match the shapes.Miss A(3yrs) and Miss D(2yrs) enjoyed this activity a lot. This was their most favourite of all. A would name the color and shape before placing it. D is learning the names of shapes, but she would match them perfectly. I put it up on our wall (using painters tape) – they do it every now and then.

Color Sorting Caterpillar – color recognition

Cut circles from construction paper. Let your LOs glue them onto a paper to make a colorful caterpillar. Once done, draw legs, face and antennae. Give some pompoms to them to color match on the caterpillar. Thanks to our blogger friend joyful parenting for this cute idea 😀. Miss A (3yrs) enjoyed the gluing part, and was excited when i drew legs, face, antennae and laminated it for her. She was not very keen on the color sorting part mainly because she knows basic colors by now. Although she did it once – picking up the pompoms using tongs and placing them on the corresponding colors. Miss D(2yrs) enjoyed this activity a lot. She had fun gluing and more fun color sorting. She kept repeating it for a while picking the pompoms using spatula and matching it to the caterpillar.

Patterns Caterpillar – patterning skills

Print out a plain caterpillar template. Or draw a caterpillar. Laminate for reuse. I used round color coding labels to make patterns (AB & ABC patterns) before laminating. Leave some empty spaces to let your LOs find out what comes next. Miss A(3yrs) was able to do these simple patterns with some help. She liked using the acrylic leaves for this activity.

Cut out hearts from construction paper. Write your LOs name on it. You can laminate it, if you plan to reuse. Fill in the alphabets on the round labels or Heart stickers and let them match it. You can also match uppercase to lowercase.

Valentine Alphabet Match

Cut out heart from construction paper. Write the alphabets on it. You can laminate it, if you plan to reuse. Write the alphabets on the round labels or Heart stickers and let your LOs match it. You can match uppercase to lowercase too.

Valentine Number Match

Cut out heart from construction paper. Write the numbers on it. You can laminate it, if you plan to reuse. Write the numbers on the round labels or Heart stickers and let your LOs match it.

Miss A(3yrs) & Miss D(2yrs) enjoyed these activities. They are pro when it comes to their name. A did perfectly fine with numbers & alphabet match. D was not interesting in number match but surprised me with the alphabet match. She did most of it all by herself. I set these out last week for them. We laminated our heart sheets so they repeated it every now and then the whole week. 👍

This easy to set up name matching activity helps toodlers & preschoolers to learn their name, letter recognition & one to one correspondence.

What you need

Bottle Cap

Marker

Round Labels(optional)

Paper

How to

Trace around the bottle caps on a paper to match the number of letters in your kids name.

Write the letters inside the circle using marker. Laminate & cut – optional (i did it because my LOs will rip the paper off in no time 😜)

Write the letters on the labels and stick them on the bottle cap. You can also use alphabet stickers or just write the letters on the bottle cap using permanent marker.

Give the paper and bottle caps to your kids & let them match the letters.

Miss A (3yrs) was able to do it with no help. She would say what each letter was and match the bottle cap to it. Then we counted how many letters she has in her name and she found out that she has 2 A’s in her name. 👏 I asked her if she could form her name without looking at the paper and she puts an A in the beginning and end and for the rest we do it together. 😀 May be next time i will try with uppercase and lowercase letters. Miss D (24 months) just learned what her name looks like and repeated each letter after me and matched it. 👍 My LOs enjoyed doing this activity. They repeated it 5 times.

Numbers on Roll is a simple and easy math activity for preschoolers. It develops number recognition, letter recognition, color recognition, hand-eye coordination, concentration & pincer grip skills. Takes less than 2 mins to setup and is perfect for busy bags.

What you need

Empty paper towel rolls/ bath rolls

Marker

Color coding stickers

How to

Use marker and write the numbers on the paper towel roll and color coding stickers.

Let your kids match the numbers and place the stickers on the roll.

You can do this with alphabets, mix and match numbers and alphabets or just use color markers to make dots on the roll and ask your kids to color match the stickers.

Miss A (3yrs) matched the numbers (each time we matched a number we would say what number it is) while Miss D(2yrs) matched the color stickers to the dots. Both were concentrating on their work and did it perfectly. 😀